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D I S'C IT R SE 



IN MEMORY OF 



ED¥AED EVEEETT. 



By SAMUEL OSGOOD, D. D. 




s ^*>§§ 



Bir 









Cef^oc^tc^^y c^-<Kr-w~; 



on: PATEIOT SCHOLAE, 



DISCOURSE 



IN MEMORY OF 



EDWARD EVERETT, 



AT VESPERS, 



IN THE CHURCH OF THE MESSIAH. SUNDAY, JANUARY 22. 



SAMUEL OSGOOD, D. D. 







NEW YORK: 
.! A M E S MIL L E K . P l" B L I S H E R 

5 3 3 BROA-DTVAY. 

1865. 



£1-34-0 
•E808 



ALVORD, PRINTER. 



DISCOURSE. 



Tin-: Scripture Lessons of the evening well introduce 
our subject. They present to us, first, the aged Samuel 
calling the people to bear witness to his integrity in their 
service ; and. secondly, the Apostle Paul's comparison of 
the souls of the dead to the stars of heaven, so differing in 
glory. 

It was announced, at the close of our service last Sun- 
day evening, that Edward Everett, a venerable judge in 
our Israel, was no more on earth, but a star on high, and 
that our tribute would be paid to his memory at this time. 
The announcement of his death startled many of you. 
because unexpected, and Ave were all of one mind as to 
the fitness of this tribute of honor and affection. The loss 
comes home to us all as a public bereavement: and in all 
sympathy, without any disguise or affectation, we can 
honestly say that we have lost a friend and benefactor. 
Wejnust allow, indeed, that this general grief differs very 
much from private grief, alike in character and demonstra- 
tion : and that we are not aggrieved, even when a great 
and good man is taken away from the nation, as much as 
when a little child droops and dies in our home, and those 
merry eyes are closed, and that prattling voice is hushed 



iii the solemn slumber of death. Yet our public sorrow 
is none the less veal because it moves in a calmer and 
more universal sphere. We may not weep much, nor be 
moved to shut ourselves out from the usual round of 
business or society; yet we are not indifferent nor un- 
grateful ; and the very calmness of our temper may be a 
proof of the loftiness of the object of our meditation, and 
the dignity of the thoughts and affections that are stirred. 
When a bright star sinks from sight, or even when the 
sun goes down, we are impressed deeply, yet not generally 
as near weeping as when a little flower that we have been 
petting is snapped by the rude wind or withers upon its 
stem. To us Edward Everett has shone as a guiding star, 
and to not a few his face was sunshine In the serene 
upper sphere of fellowship In- was a friend to us all. 
Statesman, scholar, patriot, orator, moralist, Christian, he 
belonged to us all ; and we may call God himself to witness 
here to-night that this service is honest and affectionate 
—alike whilst we bless the goodness of the Almighty giver, 
and the richness •'(' the gift. We render it all the more 
honestly and reasonably, because, instead of dwelling 
merely upon an individual character, we meditate upon 
a life that opens rich lessons in the providence of God and 
the history of our age. 

What was there in Edward Everett's career to dwell 
upon with satisfaction and edification now? What idea 
does he represent \ what virtue had he \ and what influ- 
ence does he leave \ 



What Idea does he represent? The very variety of 
his labors, the compass of his attainments, the richness of 
his gifts, makes it hard for us to reply. Had he done 
only one thing very well, or given his mind to one line of 
thought, it would have been far easier to define his domi- 
nant idea. It is easy to say what was the idea of his 
illustrious friends and associates: that Webster was the 
expounder of the Constitution : Story, the head of Ameri- 
can Jurisprudence; Channing, the champion of Human 
Nature; Prescott, the master of Spanish-American His- 
tory ; but not so easy to say what Everett was, unless we 
say that he was every thing that a universal scholar can 
be. The merest glance at his life shows the universality 
of his career, and prepares us to appreciate the breadth 
of his labors. At thirteen years, a college student; at 
seventeen, a graduate famous among men— at an age 
when most youths are at their sports, and hardly have 
begun to dream of ambition, much less of stern labor; 
then a college tutor, a divinity student, and a poet; at 
nineteen a preacher, and in the pulpit of the brilliant 
Bnckminster; at twenty, author of a solid work of the- 
ology in defence of Christianity, and professor elect to 
the chair of Greek literature at < lambridge ; for four years 
a student and traveller in Europe, with access to its best 
society, schools, and libraries, a friend of Byron, and a 
guest of Scott; at twenty-live, a brilliant classic lecturer 
at Cambridge, and laborious editor of the North American 
Review ; at thirty a member of Congress, and full of 



6 

laborious and honorable service there for ten years ; at 
foity, Governor of Massachusetts, and for four years ; at 
forty-six, our Minister to England, and for four years; at 
fifty, President of Harvard University, and for three years ; 
at fifty-eight, successor to Daniel Webster, as Secretary 
of State; at fifty-nine, United States Senator; at sixty, 
again in private life from ill health; soon rallying his 
strength, he entered upon those wide, brilliant, and effec- 
tive labors of letters, patriotism, and humanity that have 
made his closing years his noblest and best. His last 
speech was at once patriotic, humane, and Christian — a 
plea for the suffering people of Savannah, in which mercy 
to the conquered was not thought inconsistent with joy in 
the victory. That speech was a noble close of his career, 
and well harmonized the two stages of his work, present- 
ing the gentleness of his conservative days with the 
flaming freedom of his later and more ideal position ; 
pleading still for our Southern brothers, but as for prodi- 
gals who must be left to their misery until they repent and 
return. 

The first time that I ever saw Edward Everett was, I 
think, in September, 1826, nearly forty years ago, at 
Charlestown, the day of his eulogy on Adams and Jeffer- 
son. An eager school-boy, I watched for him in the 
procession on the way to the old Puritan Church, and 
was charmed with his presence. He was then about 
thirty years of age, with the bloom of youth upon his 
cheek, and with light, flowing hair, and eyes mild and 



lustrous, such as might help an artist towards a sketch of 
Milton in his early prime. His voice deepened the spell, 
and the air of that solemn old building seemed charged 
with electric life; and at the telling passages of the 
oration the hearts of the hearers seemed to stop heating, 
to complete that silence of eager attention. I saw him for 
the last time at Cambridge, in July. 1804. He was with 
his coevals in age. at the head of a procession of graduates, 
among dignitaries whose prestige younger graduates never 
forget. He came forward and gave me his hand, with his 
"benign smile, and referred kindly to a recent stray "Vaca- 
tion Letter," in which I had joined his name with Bryant, 
James Walker, and Orville Dewey, as having attained 
the ripe age of seventy .years, and had closed with the 
words, "God grant that it may be long before their cher- 
ished heads are laid low !" His head was first to fall, and 
there is a blessing in recalling that short interview. These 
personal reminiscences will not be thought egotistic, whilst 
they bring home to you the face and personality of our 
honored scholar. 

Such is the simplest statement of the various phases of 
Everett's career, and those of us who have known him 
well can almost see him now in these chief aspects 
of his life. But through all this variety, is there any 
approach to unity of idea "'. Above all these many things, 
is there any one thing especially conspicuous i There 
surely is ; and we can justly say that, throughout this 
universality of scholarly labor, his prominent idea was 



8 

to be a true American, a Aviso, laborious, effective citizen 
of this great Republic. This wish appears in every thing 
that lie lias said and done. His first performance in 
public, after graduation, a "Phi Beta Kappa" poem, was 
on American Poets, and was given at eighteen; and the 
first of his great orations was on the "Circumstances 
Favorable to the Progress of Literature in America." 
His learning, from the first, was made to bear upon our 
national wants; and ltis Greek lectures, instead of being a 
pedant's lumber, were a patriot's living word. During 
his forty years of political life, since he left the calm 
retreats of letters, he has been at work for the country; 
and lie never seems to have been contented until his 
service in some way reached the life of the nation. 

This habit came, undoubtedly, from his temperament, 
and not wholly from his choice, and illustrated his limita- 
tions as Avell as his powers. He was not a man of 
abstractions, nor could he rest in abstract ideas. He clung 
to places and to persons. He was not busy with develop- 
ing a philosophy or religion that might revolutionize the 
world; nor did he breathe freely in the rarefied air of 
sublimated metaphysics or theosophy. He was no mystic, 
no transcendentalist, nor in any sense a radical. He took 
things as they were, and tried to make the best of them. 
America was his country, and he tried to make the best 
of her, and to bring all Ids splendid treasures and talents 
to her defence and honor. He was, by eminence, our 
Patriot Scholar, and as such he stands above all others as 



being first to enter the field, and first to this day in the 
breadth and influence of his labors. 

When we call him patriot scholar, we state at once Tin- 
object and subject of his studies and labors. His object 
was to act upon our own people, and. notwithstanding his 
European travel and his classical and Oriental learning, he 
made all his strength and eloquence tell at home upon his 
own land. He was. indeed, cosmopolitan in his compass, 
and domestic and neighborly in affection ; yet his favorite 
and habitual range was not the wide world nor his near 
neighborhood, but the nation ; and in his love of country 
he was almost as much of a Greek as he was in his literary 
tastes. His friendship was not of that kind to move him 
to write his "In Memoriam," like Tennyson, nor his 
thought so bold and universal as to undertake a Bistory 
of Civilization, like Thomas Buckle. Nor did he probably 
ever dream of adding a new chapter to Kant on Pure 
Reason, or to Edwards on the Will. He was willing 
and determined to be a patriot in face of all opposition, 
and stood by the American Union in spite of the reaction- 
ists who preferred aristocracy to the Republic, and the 
radicals who preferred the destruction of the Republic to 
the surrender or even delay of their reforms, and who 
preached disunion in the sacred name of humanity. He 
was willing to love America with all her faults ; to tolerate 
even slavery when sustained by law and a historical part 
of the nation ; and he was willing, nay, swift to strike at 
the slave power, as soon as it struck at the life of the 



10 

Republic. First pro-slavery, then anti-slavery, not, ap- 
parently, from ideal or philosophical grounds, but from 
patriotism, he died an abolitionist, because he died a 
patriot. 

A patriot in object, he was always the scholar in his 
subject. He treated every topic in the spirit of a student, 
rather than as a theorist or a philosopher. He always 
brought the rich learning of the past to bear upon the 
present, and to prefigure the future. As an orator and 
statesman he was still the scholar, his orations and state 
papers exhausting the learning of the subject, and pointing 
it with wisdom, and often with wit, and kindling it into 
eloquence. Other men Avould more inflame the populace 
by a stirring appeal, and more command the Senate by a 
cogent argument ; but no man could so charm alike the 
many and the few by the wealth of his learning, the 
beauty of his style, and the charm of his elocution. It 
has, I believe, been said of him, he was more the Cicero 
than the Demosthenes of our American eloquence; more 
memorable, we may add, for fulness, elaboration, and 
grace, than for simplicity, point, and fire. Yet a true 
orator he was, and one who reached the heart of the many 
and the few, and who, being dead, yet speaketh and will 
always speak. 

Intellectually, as well as practically, he was the 
scholar, and it was the habit of his mind to approach 
every topic in the path of learning rather than of specula- 
tion. He asked, what says the past? what is the witness 



11 

of history? what tacts, laws, institutions, characters, bear 
upon the case; and he regarded the present age as the 
child of the past and the parent of the future, in Provi- 
dential succession. He did not believe that there is any 
bieak in the Divine plans ; hence he was no individualist, 
no radical, not a thorough Puritan, and not readily an 
idealist. He regarded civilization as the continuous and 
combined life of mankind, not as the casual work of a 
genius, or the fitful development of novel ideas or start- 
ling theories. In his student's loyalty, as well as his 
personal modesty, he started from the common consent 
or from the mind of the many, not from his individual 
stand-point, and hence followed the historical instead of 
the ideal path ; and he was a conservative rather than a 
radical, an institutionalist rather than an individualist. 
This disposition gave him great trouble, and kept him 
during a large portion of his career under the ban of the 
radical mind of his State and the nation. A son of a 
Puritan minister, he was no Puritan, either by temper or 
culture, and far more after the pattern of Jeremy Taylor, 
or Fenelon, than of John Cotton, or Jonathan Edwards, 
or Theodore Parker—that last word of Puritan individu- 
alism. He was no Puritan, either in the fact of his dis- 
like to set up his own subjective experience against the 
objective method of history, or in his love of architec- 
tural and ritual beauty. He worshipped in the Liberal 
Church in which he was educated, and was content to be 
a Liberal Christian of the Unitarian order, with frequent 



12 

protest against sectarian sharpness, and in favor of sympa- 
thetic and devotional worship. He preferred to express 
his faith in the simple unsectarian phrase of the Apostle's 
Creed, and would have liked the old church liturgy, rid 
of much of its dogmatism and prolixity. He favored a 
change towards a partially liturgical service in his own 
church, and the ancient burial service was read in part 
over his coffin. His religion, like his culture, was a union 
of the classic with the Christian thought, and more after 
the temper of Erasmus the Christian Humanist, than that 
of Luther and Calvin, the reformers who have led the new 
age, or of Laud and Pusey the Anglo-Catholics, who would 
bring back the old ages. Its type was neither a Puritan 
meeting-house nor an old cathedral, but a church of the 
Renaissance, like St. Paul's of London, or St. Peter's of 
Rome. In saying that he was less of a Puritan than a 
Churchman, we must therefore beware of ascribing to him 
any excessive ecclesiastic tendencies, or even any close 
sympathy with the recent revival of the Romantic 
school of letters and the mediaeval type of religion. He 
was not Gothic, but Classic, in his make and culture ; more 
like a Greek temple, with its horizontal beams that lead 
the eye over the landscape, or a Human palace, with its 
round arches that suggest Unite completness, than like a 
Gothic cathedral with the springing columns and pointed 
spires that express infinite yearning and invite the 
devotee to mystic reverie under solemn shades before 
flaming altars. He was a Liberal Churchman, not a radi- 



13 

cal independent ; and he approached the exciting question 
of the day in the scholarly Churchman's soberness, not in 
the Puritan's radical abstractions. He would see the 
slave freed by gradual emancipation, not by violent agi- 
tation : and did not change, but rather applied his prin- 
ciples, when lie saw the historical status of the nation 
was wholly changed, rebellion had become radical in the 
cause of slavery, and abolitionism had ceased to be 
destructive, and had become conservative and Unionist. 
That he ever approved slavery in principle we do not 
believe; but that lie accepted it as a national fact, until 
doomed as a national curse, we may justly maintain, and 
rejoice that patriotism at last allowed and even compelled 
him to affirm absolute light and universal freedom. 

His studies, as well as his public spirit, opened his 
mind to the liberal thought of our time, and his final 
uncompromising devotion to liberty had the weight of the 
higher classic moralists as well as of the new progressive 
thinkers in its behalf. The Roman jurisprudence and the 
whole conservative band of masters of international law, 
which he so faithfully studied, made him sometimes an 
over-cautious statesman ; but he was enough of a lover 
of Plato and Zeno. Epictetus and Cicero, to be certain that 
in this final assertion of human rights he was interpreting 
the conscience of the age in the light of that great human- 
ity which led the ancient sages to affirm with Cicero that 
there is a law not merely for Athens and Rome, but for 
the whole globe and the whole race, una et sempiterna. 



14 

one and eternal. Thus our patriot scholar, in his own 
path, rose to ideal principles, and as a student of history 
and a lover of institutions became the champion of liberty 
and humanity. He met his old radical antagonists in good 
fellowship, and died with their blessings on his pillow and 
his grave. If we compare our free and loyal nationality 
to a great mountain with granite summit like Mount Wash- 
ington or Monadnock, we may say that the radicals of the 
land have reached the top from its northern side, through 
snow and ice and cutting sleet and howling winds, while 
Everett and his gentler band climbed the southern slope 
through springing fountains, blooming flowers, singing 
birds, not without perils from burning heats and deadly 
plants and reptiles. Upon that granite peak they both met 
together, and the elegant scholar clasped hands with the 
rough reformer under the same open heavens, and invoked 
God's blessing upon the whole land and its people, with 
every star restored to its flag, and every shackle broken 
among its millions. So the scholar become an idealist, the 
conservative a reformer, without ceasing to be a patriot ; 
and all his treasured words of historical wisdom hushed 
their eloquence into devout silence in presence of that 
word eternal which the God of ages and Father of our 
spirits is speaking now. as to Elijah after the strong wind 
and the earthquake and the fire of war and desolation. 
Our patriot scholar heard that word, and never faltered 
afterwards. He has gone up like that prophet, in a chariot 
of fire — unlike that prophet as in some respects he was — 



15 

and his mantle is now falling upon the nation, the heir of 
his fame, his labors, and his principles. 

What has our patriot scholar done to carry out his 
idea, or what Virtue has he added to his aim? We may 
surely answer, first of all, that no man of our day has 
done so many things as he. For half a century and more, 
he has been constantly at work, leaving never a year, 

hardly a month, unmarked by his voi< r pen. Preacher, 

Professor, Editor, Essayist, Poet, Lecturer, Statesman, 
Ambassador, Orator, Academician, Jurist, he lias written 
elaborately on all leading subjects ; his works are at once 
a mirror of the events and a compend of the learning of 
our time. Has he done well, and is there virtue in his 
work I He has done well, and there is virtue in his work 
—the virtue of both spheres of the soul, the sensitive, 
thoughtful intelligence, and the earnest, strong will. 
Docility, scholarly and patriotic, is his great virtue, 
and he studied and followed the national destiny. 

He kept open mind to all knowledge, and his rare 
mastery of language fitly measured the breadth of that 
mental hospitality that welcomed all letters and arts to 
his regard. He made all these acquisitions Ins own by 
the clearness of his method and the charm of his diction, 
if not always by philosophical analysis and ideal assimi- 
lation. He certainly adorned whatever he touched, and 
left the mark of his taste and skill upon every topic, 
whether the tillage of the soil or the culture of the soul, 



1G 

the order of the heavens or the laws of nations. He had 
eminently the virtue of intellectual susceptibility and 
adaptive force, and in its range of taste and fancy, order 
and clearness, his mind was without a superior in the 
land, much as others may have distanced him in ideal 
intuition and original imagination. He had that scholarly 
fidelity that sought to do every task well, and every 
deliberate work of his pen bore a kind of tinish in the 
amount and arrangement of the material and the com- 
pleteness of the finish that gave tolas composition a moral 
quality, and interpreted anew Qnintilians saying, that 
a true orator must needs be a good man. 

He had high virtue of the will. Who has been more 
industrious than he; Who more patient and more per- 
severing through all enticements and all obstacles? In 
this way he was a hero, and the world that envied his 
o-ood fortune lias never done justice to his patience and 
self-denial, lis was constantly beset witli difficulties, not 
always abounding in means, and when apparently affluent 
always pressed by importunate suitors, and harassed by 
provoking assailants. He bore more insults from inferiors 
than any man of our time, and was always the pet mark 
of the maligners who discovered his sensitiveness and 
abused his forbearance. He cared probably more than 
most men for the favor of others, and did more than 
almost any other man to deserve favor by kindness of 
deed and word. I once wrote of him that no man had 
done more kind actions than he, and he wrote me that the 



17 

saying gratified him more than any thing that had ever 
been said of him, and I now repeat it over his grave 

He had much to hear in various ways, and had ailments 
that tried him much for years. Nor was his rare equa- 
nimity and almost ascetic life the easy grace of spontaneous 
nature. His tastes were luxurious, yet his habits were 
simple; Ins senses were exquisite and exacting, and he 
might readily have revelled in the garden of Epicurus, 
had not principle led him to the porch of Zeno, intellect 
won him to the academy of Plato, and, best of all, faith 
kept him in the Church of Christ, where devotion deep- 
ened apparently with the lapse of years. 

He was not what is called a hero, for he was dependent 
and sensitive, exacting of sympathy, not self- rely inn', not 
hardy, proud, or commanding. Yet he had a kind of 
heroism that Christ loved and the Church blesses in its 
saints. He had largely the lowly virtues of the poor in 
spirit, the meek, the peace-making, which have promise 
that theirs is the kingdom of heaven, and that they shall 
inherit the earth and be called the children of God. He 
was not the hard}' oak, but he was the pliant, tenacious, 
climbing, fruitful vine that lifts its clustering fruits aloft, 
bends instead of breaking, and stores up rich and inspirit- 
ing juices that outlive the prouder fruits that display their 
gorgeous splendor in the orchard. He kept on his purpose 
to the last, pursued his studies in the interest of patriot- 
ism, consecrated eloquence by charity ; and during the last 
ten years of life he gave away to his country fruits of 



18 

his own earnings in amount far beyond what is deemed an 
independent fortune by men of letters in our day, and 
what would have seemed to him princely wealth in his 
rally years. In one respect he was capable of the highest 
heroism. He could give himself with unfailing loyalty to 
a great duty, and follow the standard of his allegiance 
wherever it might lead under rightful authority, little as 
his temper moved him to audacity. He could work for 
his country without stint with his pen and voice, and if 
the call had clearly come to him, he could have taken the 
field under some commanding genius, and died like 
Wadsworth and the Lowells for the old Hag. 

One great trait of virtue he surely had. He never gave 
up, and died at his post with his armor on. Precocious as 
was his early development, he never stopped growing, and 
not only spread the surface, but rose to nobler height with 
years. His florid beginning did not bring what it seemed 
to many to portend — an early decline, as of an evanescent 
flower. His life was in this respect like one of the great 
minsters that charm and impress by their exquisite beauty 
of finish and the solid mass of the masonry, such as decades 
of years or even centuries only can complete. Last of all 
comes the spire, with carvings as beautiful as upon the 
early porch, with cross that salutes the heavens, and bells 
that charm earth and air with their cheering and inspirit- 
ing chimes. 

His very hand-writing lion 1 the mark of his fidelity, 
ami his pen was loyal servant of its master. 1 have 



L9 

before me liis Hebrew Lexicon, which he gave me long 
ago, when I was in my 'teens, and it is full of marginal 
notes in fine and exquisite writing in Latin, Greek, lie- 
brew, and Arabic, the writing of his youthful years. Tins 
letter, that lie wrote the day before Ins death, and which 
came to me the day after his death, has the mark of the 
same careful touch, and only towards the close dues it 
tremble, as if before the quivering curtain that was soon 
to hide him from our sight. 

His last speech well closed the career that his first ser- 
mon began, and we cannot doubt that that benign and 
powerful agency, the Spirit of God, the Heavenly Com- 
forter in which he believed, dwelt within him through 
his career, gave him strength in his weakness, and united 
his striving purpose with the infinite and Eternal Will. 

His Influence, who of us will deny? Once it was a 
fascination to many of us ; now it is a calm, uplifting 
remembrance, an illuminating, cheering association with 
all the refinements of society and letters, all the loyalties 
of the home, and country, and church. 

In one particular, we may all remember Edward 
Everett gratefully, for he was kindly and true to every 
household tie, faithful and affectionate in his family, hos- 
pitable to friends, and often overflowing witli genial 
humor and playful fancy. His memorial of his eldest 
daughter should endear his name to every home in the 
land, lb- has helped us all, morever, in the education of 



20 

our children : and the charm of his diction, the purity of 
his thought, and the affluence of his learning, and even of 
his science, give him a high place among our popular 
teachers, and secure for him rising honor in the school 
and family libraries of the nation. 

Americans ! we owe him honor, as a nation, for he 
loved and served the country from the first to the last, 
and identified our land with his name and service. He 
has stood by us when the world hated and scorned us. 
In France, Germany, and England, the time has been 
when the highest impressions of our America came from 
his courtly presence, classic elegance, and charming 
speech. If in some respects he fell short of the most 
advanced views of liberty, and was willing once to com- 
promise with what all progressive men call oppression, 
we must remember that he saw dangers to which many 
more radical leaders were blind; and that after the fearful 
crisis came, he stood manfully up for liberty, and whilst 
some of his old detainers were trembling in the knees and 
ready to accept peace with disunion. 

The closing years of his life were, in one important 
respect, of vast service, by doing so much to correct the 
ultraism and integrate the antagonisms of the New England 
mind, and. in fact, to give catholicity to American thinking. 
In him, our ablest conservative scholar formed an alliance 
with the party of progress ; institutionalism made cove- 
nant with individualism; history joined hands with 
reform ; law and precedent leagued with ideas and 



21 

humanity. Tt was a great hour that struck when Edward 
Everett accepted the vital principle of William Ellery 
Channing, and the conservative statesman stood up in 
old Faneuil Hall as the uncompromising champion of 
human rights! Before, his classic studies and careful 
precedents had seemed like the cold and empty channels of 
our great aqueducts, but at last the aqueducts opened into 
the upper lakes and fountains, and the living waters were 
flowing through those solid beds, as when our Croton or 
Cochituate poured their fulness into our reservoirs and 
hydrants. Mutual blessing, when fontal ideas wed them- 
selves to institutional loyalty, and the mountain springs 
have a sure and effective outlet, and the fixed channels 
have a full and healthy tide ! Ultraism comes to its end, 
not by the rule of radicalism or conservatism alone, but 
by the catholicity that weds liberty to law, and gives to 
primal ideas their just orbit and organic development. 

As a Christian in temper and faith, in devotion and 
charity, he bears an unsullied name. He accepted Chris- 
tianity as a positive revelation and a vital power, defended 
its historical truth, and applied its practical point. An 
habitual worshipper at church and at home, he never 
departed from the temper of his ordination vows, and his 
last presence at the communion table brought thither 
undoubtedly an humbler devotee, than when the gifted 
youth, more than fifty years before, took the cup of 
blessing and tin- bread of life. He was not ashamed to 
acknowledge that he needed God, and could not do with- 



22 

out Him. He was not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ; 
and, alike as a student of history and a man of affairs, he 
held the Christian religion to be the crowning gift of God 
and the light of mankind, the law of true life and the 
pledge of ininn >rtality. He preached the dedication sermon 
of our First Congregational Church in Chambers street, 
January 21, 1821 — forty-four years ago, yesterday ; and 
had his name been announced as a preacher in our city 
this January, 1865, no man would have denied the titness 
of his return to the pulpit, or declared that his civil career 
had sullied his parity or robbed him of his sanctity. 

From our present point of view, we cannot share in the 
public opinion that looked upon his passage to the Greek 
professorship from the Boston pulpit as an elevation. But 
we must remember that it was the day of reaction against 
the old Puritan dogmatism and austerity, the renaissance 
of New England art and letters. Edward Everett was the 
Raphael of the new classicism, and he painted, not with 
the pencil, but with the pen and voice. He lived long 
enough to rise above the superficial theology of the secu- 
lar caste who ruled his youth, and to see that Divinity 
should rule the' Humanities, and was nearer the spirit of 
the pulpit when he died than when he preached. 

In the light of our present experience, we can see a 
Providential use in this transfer to Cambridge and to the 
Greek classics; for Greece, that first enticed our liberal 
thinkers from the old faith by its charming Humanism, has 
done much to send us back to it by its grand idealism; and 



23 

New England thinking lias of late been repeating in the 
nineteenth century the experience of Christendom in the 
second and third centuries, and learning to interpret the 
facts of the Gospel according to the ideas of the sages, to 
ascend from the words of Scripture to the Word Eternal, 
and to hail the Greek wisdom as the Gentile precursor of 
the Christ in whom God is with us in the fulness of His 
truth and grace. 

Last Sunday evening we spoke of the manifestation of 
Christ to the nations, and especially to our America, as to 
the Magi of old, with their gifts of gold, frankincense, and 
myrrh. Is not our present meditation a continuation of 
that topic I Is not our Patriot Scholar eminent among the 
providential men who have seen God's glory in the New 
World, and laid their treasures at His feet \ 

He brought gold, much gold, literally, to the treasures 
of our Christian civilization, by his abounding charity ; 
and more gold, in its higher sense, as the symbol of indus- 
trial power, the manly force which he trained in himself 
and the people for the coming kingdom of God among 
men in this land. His voice is even now heard in the 
great wilderness, calling East and West, Atlantic and 
Pacific shores, to meet together, and consecrate domain 
and treasure to patriotism, humanity, liberty, and religion. 

He brought frankincense, and his tine taste, beautiful 
fancy, and charming eloquence rose ever to spiritual loy- 
alty, and bear now his own and the people's affections to 
the Supreme Good. His name led the higher literary 



24 

enthusiasm of our nation, and stands for culture combined 
with purity, humanity, and devotion. There is incense in 
his pages still; and if it sometimes burns in honor of 
heroes, and courts the favor of the popular ear, it never is 
perverted to self- worship, but gives its fragrance to every 
good cause, and is never content to spend its sweetness 
without adoring the Eternal Spirit. His censer swings 
widely, but never turns away from the altar of the 
Highest. 

Myrrh he brought, and he has embalmed in his diction 
and eloquence the whole past of the nation, so that his 
very name stands, not for himself, but for the recorded life 
of the country, and the chronicled memory of civilized 
man. He fust brought the treasures of European scholar- 
ship to America, and opened the old ages of our country 
to the new generation. Myrrh he is, and shall he more 
precious as the custodian of the past, as the impatient 
present is tempted to turn its back upon experience, and 
forget that all true progress is filial, and hope is daughter 
of memory. As to-night, in our meditative vision, we see 
the Magi of the Western "World passing in solemn pro- 
cession with the Magi of the East, we salute, as one of the 
majestic company, our Patriot Scholar, and render thanks 
for our share of his gold, and frankincense, and myrrh, for 
the man through whom comes the gift, to God, who is the 
giver both of the man and the gift. 









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